3 ms·
Clickbait titles are part of the medium of YouTube and any regular user will recognize it as such. And frankly, having watched the review, I can easily believe
by philwelch 3y ago
Clickbait titles are part of the medium of YouTube and any regular user will recognize it as such. And frankly, having watched the review, I can easily believe this is literally the worst product he’s ever reviewed; it’s a product that costs as much as a smartphone that does a tiny subset of what any smartphone already does, extremely poorly.
But let’s talk about the clickbait. The full title of the video is, “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now”. If it was just “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed”, that would be a perfectly fair summary—maybe a little clickbaity, though it doesn’t seem like MKBHD’s style to go on a rant and completely tear a product apart for the amusement of the audience, and that’s not what he does in the video, either. The “…For Now” vaguely implies that maybe, somehow, in the future, it will improve to the point where it is no longer quite so terrible, and there is some sort of hidden nuance to the otherwise strident tone of the first part of the title, that maybe there is some hope of the product one day, in the future, having some redeeming quality perhaps delivered via OTA update. You don’t know! It’s a mystery! And that mystery—the hope that maybe this piece of junk isn’t totally pointless after all—that’s the clickbait. You want to know what he means by “for now”! The most sensational, clickbaity part of the video title isn’t the negative part, but instead the part that implies the product might be of any value!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Intralexical 3y agoIkr? I'm more inclined to agree with this ellipsized note in the fine article: > Actually, the deference Brownlee gave the vision and the potential of future upgrades was arguably generous But of course, pointing that out would be a red herring, because I don't believe the original tweet was made in good faith in the first place. Vassallo sounds like the sort who would be satisfied only if nobody is allowed to criticize something he likes (and ideally if at some point you click through and pay money for his… Influencer newsletter? Idfk).